Nicholas Lee sweeps Singapore UTS Rd7

Round 7 of the Singapore’s Urban Touring Series was held this past weekend at Singapore’s Urban Onroad Raceway. The event saw the first appearance of top local Nicholas Lee in the Touring Car Class (17.5T Blinky). As expected, Yokomo’s Nicholas set the pace in qualifying by recording TQ runs in the first 2 of 3 qualifying rounds. Series leader XRAY’s Dominic Quek would have to be contented with a 2nd place start in the A-Main, with YS Heng in 3rd.

With the series running a bump-up format, Leg 1 of the B-Main would have an added significance for those who missed out on the 6 direct A-Main spots after qualifying. The bump-up final was led off by Chee Lip Keong and young Sean Lee, who both looked like they would comfortably bump-up to the A-Main. However, a mistake by Sean at about the 3-minute mark gave XRAY driver Hasron Robana the chance to move ahead and eventually snatch the last bump-up.

In Leg 1 of the A-Main, Nicholas managed to maintain his qualifying momentum and take the win by a 6.5sec margin over Dominic, with YS in 3rd. In Leg 2, Dominic started strong and was able to close up on Nicholas in the starting lap. However, contact between the 2 front-runners dropped them to the back, with Dominic deciding to pull off to save his tyres. This left the door open for Ng Wei Jian and YS to battle for the win. Eventually, Wei Jian prevailed to secure the win, with YS in 2nd and Eugene Goh holding off a hard-charging Nicholas to take 3rd. Leg 3 was set to be an epic battle for the overall win. Nicholas was quick off the blocks, but Dominic chased hard to prevent a runaway victory. However, a couple of braking mistakes and missed apexes by Dominic allowed Nicholas to build up a 2-sec cushion, which he would hold till the end to take the overall victory. Dominic finished 2nd, while YS fended off Wei Jian to secure 3rd. However, Wei Jian would take overall 3rd on a tie-break decision going his way by virtue of his win in Leg 2.